金門

choi

Cindy Chang, Taiwan's Kinmen Island Seeks to Cash in on Its Past. Los Angeles Times, Oct 19, 2014.
www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg ... 20141019-story.html

Quote:

"Living in a war zone exacted a high toll on the local population, which today numbers about 120,000. * * * Xiamen, a mainland city of 3.5 million, is a ferry ride away.

"As relations between Beijing and Taipei thawed, the Taiwanese military pulled back from Kinmen, which is about 10 miles across at its widest point. From a peak of nearly 100,000 soldiers in the 1950s, only about 3,000 are stationed here today. * * * Crowds [tourists] are sparse in the off-season, but tourism is the best hope to supplement agricultural incomes now that the soldiers are gone.

"Having experienced warfare firsthand, older Kinmen residents want to avoid it at all costs. Kinmen's proximity to Fujian province in China, along with a shared dialect and customs, means many residents feel an affinity for the mainland, intensified by the fact that they can now travel there freely. Some say they are not opposed to someday reunifying.

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the rest, which is familiar.
(b) In case you do, here are two notes.
(i) "LI Wo-shih, Kinmen's magistrate, makes the short hop to China a dozen times a year to talk trade and tourism."

金門縣長 李沃士 (KMT)
(ii) "On the outskirts of Jincheng 金城鎮, the small town that is Kinmen's capital, Tseng-dong WU's 吳 增棟workshop [to make kitchen knives 金門菜刀] blends the old and the new Kinmen."